Date Range Picker with Flatpickr

Revamping Date Selection for a Smoother Experience: The Power of Flatpickr Library

In a recent project, I needed to create a way for users to pick a range of dates, both a starting "from" date and an ending "to" date. To make this happen, I decided to use the Flatpickr Datepicker library. This library is known for being really good at handling dates in all sorts of ways, which was exactly what I needed.

After setting up the Flatpickr library, I got the date range feature working properly. But then, when I showed it to the client, they got a bit confused. They wanted to pick a range of dates, but they were expecting to see two separate places to put the starting and ending dates. Instead, they only saw one box.

This feedback made me realize that the way things looked and worked wasn't matching up with what the client wanted. I saw a chance to make things better by changing how the date selection worked. By making the library work together with a design that makes more sense, I could fix the confusion and make things smoother for the users.

But now that there are going to be two input fields, and the value of the from field needs to be greater than the value of the to field, I needed to make sure so I wrote this article to show you how to do it.

Here's my solution:

<div class="col-md-4 form-group">
    <label for="fp-range">Start Date</label>
    <input type="text" name="date_range[start]" id="fp-range" class="form-control date_range_start"
           placeholder="YYYY-MM-DD"/>
</div>
<div class="col-md-4 form-group">
    <label for="fp-range">End Date</label>
    <input type="text" name="date_range[end]" id="fp-range " class="form-control  date_range_end"
           placeholder="YYYY-MM-DD"/>
</div>

 const dateRangeStart = $('.date_range_start').flatpickr({
    altInput: true,
    altFormat: 'F j, Y',
    dateFormat: 'Y-m-d'
});
 
 
$('.date_range_end').flatpickr({
    altInput: true,
    altFormat: 'F j, Y',
    dateFormat: 'Y-m-d',
    onChange: function(selectedDates) {
        const startDate = dateRangeStart.selectedDates[0];
        const endDate = selectedDates[0];
        if (endDate < startDate) {
            dateRangeStart.setDate(endDate);
        }
    }
});